The present invention pertains to an apparatus and method for accessing a World Wide Web (WWW) homepage by employing a barcode and a scanner.
Further, the present invention more generally relates to a communication system and method. More particularly, the present invention relates to a communication system and method wherein it will be much easier for users to employ a plurality of communication means such as the Internet or ordinary telephone via a single user interface by uniquely designating a digital code, such as a two-dimensional barcode, to the identification information of an individual.
In connecting to a homepage on the Internet via a personal computer by using, for example, Netscape Navigator, according to a conventional manner, a cursor is positioned on the window designed for netsites and an optional URL (Uniform Resources Locators) is inputted through a keyboard.
However, a URL consisting of a combination of letters and symbols contains a large number of characters. Therefore, those who are not accustomed to a keyboard operation or the Roman alphabet often find it laborious to input a URL through a keyboard, and thus they even fail to access a desired homepage because of an input mistake.
Given the aforementioned background, the inventor of the present invention took advantage of a barcode widely used in the distribution industry for the purpose of merchandise testing, inventory management, and sales management, etc. to provide an apparatus and method for accessing a WWW homepage, by which a targeted homepage can be instantaneously accessed without involving a keyboard operation, wherein a barcode representing an address such as a URL is affixed on a medium such as a magazine advertisement or a newspaper insert and the barcode read by a scanner is converted to a URL so as to have browser software, such as Mosaic or Netscape Navigator, access the desired homepage.
There are a plurality of means to electronically communicate with a specific person. The telephone is the most frequently used means, followed by the vastly used facsimile. More recently, on-line communication using a personal computer is also used by many people. In order to communicate via these various tools, more than one identification code must be designated to a person, namely a telephone number, a facsimile number, a URL of a homepage on the World Wide Web (WWW), or an E-mail address. Each of these identification codes has a different user interface, depending upon the technical characteristics, and thus cannot be handled in a uniform manner.
The following description will first focus on communications on the Internet through which we can browse around homepages provided on the WWW and also send an E-mail to a specific individual. In these cases, the code used to identify the other party of the communication includes a URL and an E-mail address which must be specified on the displayed screen of a mailer or browser for initiating the communication. In cases other than these two, an address corresponding to the destination of the communication has to be specified when one wishes to use a function or facility available on the Internet.
There are other methods for connecting to a specific homepage on the WWW. For example, from a homepage that one is currently visiting or from a page showing a search result of a search engine, one can move to another homepage hyper-linked via a protocol called HTTP by clicking a portion where an HTML anchor tag is embedded with a pointing device such as a mouse. Typically, one can also move to a specific page on the WWW by clicking the page included in the bookmark list of the browser.
In the course of continuously moving about a plurality of homepages or "net-surfing" on the WWW with the above method, the user or the net-surfer does not have to know the actual URL's that are attached to the pages being visited by the person. This is because the browser automatically recognizes the embedded URL of each of the destination sites on the currently visited page and moves to the thus specified page by clicking a specific anchor tag.
When one sends an E-mail over the Internet, he/she has to specify the E-mail address of the receiving party. In many cases, however, the sender of an E-mail uses the list of the frequent addressed destinations and specifies one of them. To do so, when the E-mail has been written and is ready to be sent, the sending party opens a window of the address book page of the associated software and selects the desired destination by clicking it with a mouse. Thus the sending party does not have to remember or be conscious of the actual address of the desired destination once he/she has added the address into the address book.
Next, the description will focus on how telephone calls are made or how facsimiles are transmitted. In such cases, the sending party has to specify the telephone or facsimile number of the desired destination. And yet, in order to communicate with one of the frequently addressed destinations, such a number can be stored in the memory of the telephone or facsimile machine and one has only to specify the stored number by using appropriate means without being conscious of the actual number.
As described above, a plurality of methods of specifying a desired destination address coexist depending upon what kind of communication is to be selected. However, such a coexistence, as a result, makes it inconvenient to handle a number of different kinds of frequent transmissions because the user interface is different and thus cannot be processed in a uniform manner. Also, in terms of the management of a large database of information on a number of individuals which is used in such an industry that gathers and maintains lists of a large number of clients, a unified and simplified method is, if any, preferred. This desired method is preferably employed without actually knowing the address of the destination just as was the case in making a telephone call or transmitting a facsimile using a stored address in the memory.
Further, when an individual or corporate entity wishes to be accessed by a large number of unspecified clients, it is convenient for the code which represents their identification information to be unified and provided in a single medium such as a telephone, facsimile, or a WWW homepage without being specific. It is more preferable for such a code to be a printed apparatus provided on a medium such as a paper in a scannable manner.